Hide Internal Symbols

Keep private helpers out of your API reference while still exporting them.

Sometimes you need to export a symbol (for use by other modules or tests) but don’t want it cluttering your public API docs.

Using exclude in Config

Add the names to the exclude list in great-docs.yml:

great-docs.yml

exclude:
  - _InternalHelper
  - _parse_raw_config
  - _SENTINEL

Any symbol whose name matches an entry in exclude is dropped during API discovery — it won’t appear in the reference pages or the sidebar.

Using the @nodoc Directive

Alternatively, add a @nodoc directive to the symbol’s docstring:

def _merge_dicts(a: dict, b: dict) -> dict:
    """Recursively merge two dicts.

    @nodoc
    """
    ...

Great Docs strips the directive line before rendering, so it never shows up in output even if you later remove the exclusion.

When to Use Which

Approach	Best for
exclude in YAML	Batch exclusions, symbols without docstrings
@nodoc directive	Keeping the decision next to the code

Both can be combined — exclude is checked first, then @nodoc.